Five Exciting Features of the New Google Home

As most of us anticipated, Google unveiled a voice-activated Bluetooth speaker (seriously, this consumer tech needs a new name) called “Google Home”. It isn’t a big breakthrough as it does basically the same actions you get on already available products including Amazon’s Echo. However, with Google’s search capabilities and some tiny neat additions, it might just be the best. Hence, here are the top five features worth checking out on Google Home.

Google Assistant

Google introduced a much enhanced and interactive version of what before you used to refer as “Google Now”, called Google Assistant. It basically lets you ask follow-up questions and converse with the results, something which other platforms like Cortana, Siri have been doing for quite a while now. Google’s new virtual assistant, however, gets a vast benefit of its knowledge graph that is being created and updated every day. Google Home bundles this functionality natively resulting in better and accurate replies.

Modular and Compact Design

Unlike its fellow contenders, Google Home flaunts a modular design which lets you interchange the bottom base shells with any fancy color variations of your choice. Additionally, the overall aesthetics have been kept compact, hence, it will occupy comparatively less space. Also, it’s cute.

Compatibility and Extensibility with Cast Standard

Unlike Amazon’s Echo, Google Home can extend itself to multiple devices in your house including speakers, televisions to work in more than one room. As it utilizes the basic “Cast standard”, you can ask it to connect with any other speaker attached to a Cast device and play music across all, something which is already available under the title – Google Cast Audio.

IOT Integration and Subtle Notifications

It would have been moronic if Google had left out Internet of Things integration for Google Home. Thankfully, they haven’t and it can integrate directly with devices including smart light bulbs and Nest thermostats. Options for this are currently limited as Google says they’re prioritizing quality over quantity to provide a refined seamless experience.

Also, worth mentioning is how Google Home handles notifications. Whenever a new alert arrives, it produces a soft beep and if the user says “Ok Google, I’m listening”, that particular notification will be read out.

Better and Richer Speakers

One thing every manufacturer trying to make a voice-activated device has missed is providing speakers that are good enough for music playback. Google claims that the output audio on Google Home is a way better with strong bass and clear highs. Although they didn’t mention anything about how loud it is. However, given the size, we don’t have high expectations.

There an endless number of possibilities of what Google can achieve by collaborating their immense data relations and technology products, this can be considered just the start. One thing that can be annoying with Google Home is that you can’t change the catch phrase, “Ok Google” which can trigger multiple devices you own including tablets, phones or even televisions. Google Home will be available later this fall. Will you be looking forward to own this one? Let us know.

Shubham Agarwal Author Shubham is based out of Ahmedabad, India and is studying to be a Computer Engineer, while specializing in mobile applications. He loves covering what's new in the technology space and aims to make it his primary profession some day.